Resident Virus
by Sakon76
Summary: We create in our own image; the digital world is no more perfect than the world of the Users.  Flynn and Tron deal with the effects of the Grid being moved to a larger system.  Sequel to "Forgiveness."


**Resident Virus**  
-a Tron: Legacy story-  
by K. Stonham  
first released 1st January 2011

Kevin felt it when the world changed.

He stopped in his tracks, drawing a curious look from his companion as Kevin dropped to one knee, hand on the ground as he accessed the root of the world, looking for what was different.

His eyes widened.

"_Gigabytes_?" he choked.

"Flynn?" Tron asked him.

He looked at his companion. "Sam's installed the Grid on a new system," he explained, standing.

"That's a good thing?"

Kevin shrugged. "The system I had us on back in '89 was cutting edge. As big and as fast as I could make it. Now, twenty years later?" He waved a hand dismissively. "Probably a hunk of junk."

"It can't be that bad," Tron protested.

"Moore's Law, man. The pace of technology waits for no user."

"So what does the new system mean for us?" Tron, as always, focused on the practical.

"Hard to say without taking a deeper look at what he's got us set up on, but one thing's for sure." Kevin grinned at Tron. "We just got a whole lot more room to expand."

* * *

The potential to expand as far as they wanted was breathtaking. The new system, however, did come with its drawbacks.

"Crime's up seven and a half percent in the Boot Sector," Tron reported.

Flynn looked up from where he sat on the ground outside his domicile. Blue light spiraled up from the bare surface before him, forming into complex glyphs and arrays.

"That sector's always been small and troubled," Flynn said.

"It's cramped," Tron replied. "I told you we should have made it bigger."

Flynn rolled his eyes. "Yes, Alan," he replied.

"Regardless," Tron said, tapping his datapad against his hand, "it looks like something's causing trouble there."

"One of the new programs coming into the Grid, you think?"

Tron shrugged. "It's possible. I'll go investigate."

"I'll come with you." Flynn stood, less agile than he had been when they'd first met.

Tron eyed his friend. "If you're sure," he said dubiously.

"Tron." Flynn stood before him, looking at him. "I'm older, yes. I can't do a lot of the acrobatic shit you still can. That doesn't mean I'm helpless."

Caught out, Tron stilled. Then he breathed a regretful laugh. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry about," Flynn waved it off. "Come on, let's go see who's dicking around with our town."

* * *

Something _was_ wrong in the Boot Sector. It was hinted at in the way the light ran subtly darker, the streets subtly quieter, the smells subtly ranker. No one would talk to them. Few would meet their eyes.

"Something's rotten in Denmark," Kevin muttered.

"What?" Tron asked him, returning from his newest attempt to get a program to cough up what was wrong with the area.

"Nothing. Line from an old user story. I'll lend you the book, if you want."

"Maybe later." Tron looked around, shook his head. "Something's up, I just can't figure out what."

"Hmm." Kevin looked up and down the street, then leaned back against a blue-limned wall. It glowed under his fingertips as he tried to find out what was going on in the sector.

Tron knew what he was doing, and nonchalantly leaned against the wall next to him, blocking the faint light of Kevin's search. Both of them were trying to be low-key; the Grid mostly ran itself, and didn't need more than specialized attention now and again from its user and his chief Security program to keep a smooth flow going. Most programs probably didn't believe the pair of them still existed; every inquiry either of them had worked into a conversation revealed that the programs thought the Creator KevinFlynn was gone, and Security Program Tron long since derezzed.

It was in a way depressing, but also liberating, not to be known.

The search didn't take long. Something shifted, drew the attention of something else, and before Kevin finished, Tron stiffened next to him.

"I think we've got trouble," the program said, looking up the street. Kevin followed his partner's gaze.

Three programs stood at the end of the street, mist swirling about their feet. Unsurprisingly, Kevin didn't recognize them, but something about them felt dark and off. Those few entities who had been out and about were rapidly seeking shelter.

"Just like a Western," he murmured, pulling his hand away from the wall. "I think you may be right."

They walked out into the middle of the street, Tron first, already pulling out his Identity Disc. Kevin left his hands at his sides, empty. Free to act.

"I hear you've been looking for us," said one of the three, a woman, her black hair buzzed close to her face. The other two, one big and bulky, the other pale and thin like a whip, flanked her.

"I hear you've been making trouble in our system," Tron replied.

"This place is a open system now," she said, poison-sweet, and Kevin really needed to have a talk with Sam about what kind of computer his kid had installed the Grid on. "We're free to do whatever we want here."

"Viruses," Kevin murmured. "Don't let them touch you."

"You got a plan?" Tron murmured back.

"Keep them busy. I need to find out how they got in."

Tron nodded, and stepped forward. The virus smiled like that pleased her and even as Kevin knelt, pressing a hand to the surface of his world, her companions outflanked her. Bulky produced an energy mace that glowed a sickly lavender. Kevin ignored him for the moment, guessing he was more brawn than brains, and concentrated instead on Skinny. Blue light erupted from the ground beneath the virus's feet, spiraling up through the mist to form a hexagonal lattice. Kevin ignored the sound of Bulky and Tron clashing, concentrating instead on isolating Skinny. He allowed himself to relish just a little Skinny's protests and the scream that cut off when the isolation cage closed.

He opened his eyes, confirming that the cage held the program, and that Tron, not even breathing hard, had dealt with Bulky. Kevin smiled.

The female program stared past Tron at him. "User," she breathed, and her face contorted to a mask of rage. A green lightwhip resolved in her hand, crackling energy. "KevinFlynn!"

_Shit, _Kevin thought, slamming his hand back to the ground as she and Tron rushed forward at the same instant, bent on annihilating one another.

* * *

"Shitshitshitshitshit..."

The User curse word ran on like a low buzzing in Tron's hearing, and he hurt everywhere. Helpful subroutines informed him that trying to move would be a bad idea, so he stayed still even as his coding bled out of his body, strings voxellating everywhere.

"Dammit-" Flynn's hands were on his disc, fixing the damage as rapidly as he could. But Tron could feel bad lines eating further into him, and wasn't sure which of them was faster.

"No!" And then Flynn did something and the bad coding froze in its tracks.

Tron coughed weakly.

"Still with me, buddy?" Flynn asked, and if his voice was cheerful, it was also strained. Tron read _bad scare_ and _too close_ into his tone, and decided he didn't want to know how close it was, if the virus had damaged him badly enough to scare the User like that.

"Barely," Tron rasped. His self-repair protocols began to grind to life, sluggish but self-mending under Flynn's guidance.

"Good." Flynn's voice turned businesslike as he continued to work. "We got 'em-the bitch and Bulky are derezzed, and I've got Skinny in an isolation loop so we can figure out where they came from and what they did."

"Wonderful." The pain started to recede and Tron took a breath. Truth to tell, the information did make him relax a bit.

"Want to know something?" Flynn asked him. Not waiting for an answer, he continued on, "Alan was never quite as creative as me. Just the way things were, no slur on him. But sometimes-and I'll deny it if you ever tell anyone-he was better than I was. Better man, usually. Better programmer, sometimes." There was a smile in Flynn's voice as he talked of his old friend, Tron's creator. Tron opened his eyes and looked up from where he was lying face-down on the ground. Flynn was kneeling over him, expression serious as he continued his work. User's work. "His coding was just that little bit better than mine. Tighter, cleaner." His eyes met Tron's. "When he made you," Flynn said, "he made a masterpiece." He finished something, and the coding strings sank back into Tron's Identity Disc, which he then handed over. Tron took it.

Sometimes he wondered just how Flynn saw him. There had always been moments, even since Tron had learned of Flynn's true nature so many cycles ago, that the other seemed like nothing more than another program. Good-natured, a bit of a dreamer, but ultimately someone Tron could trust to have his back. There had been moments, too, like this one, where Flynn seemed like the User he really was, doing unimaginable things, speaking so easily of creation.

Most of the time, though, Flynn's User nature ran only like a thin background string in Tron's mind: a reminder that his friend had powers he did not (but wasn't that fair? there were some things Tron could do that Flynn never could), but that despite their ultimate difference, they were somehow friends, and that this Grid was something they had created together.

Tron's injury finished knitting itself closed, and Flynn smiled, though worry did not fade from his eyes. He pushed to his feet, and extended a hand down to help Tron stand as well.

Tron accepted.

* * *

Kevin catalogued the virus's identity, source, and function, and documented it all, sending the information off in a message to root, where either Sam or Alan would be able to pick it up. He could start patching the vulnerabilities that had let the trio into the Grid, but it never hurt to have another like mind or two working on a project.

He spent a few milli-cycles purging Skinny's bad code and rewriting him back into an uncorrupted program before returning him to the Grid.

Then he started in on his real work.

Tron was a nearly perfect Security program, a testament to Alan's programming. Kevin had never seen him take damage before in a battle with another program. The memory of the lightwhip slicing into Tron, infecting his code, was not one he wanted repeated. He'd nearly lost his friend, and if Tron's disc hadn't shattered the virus, derezzing her, Kevin wouldn't have been able to save him. He'd never seen Tron's code up close and in person before; only Alan's clean coding had let him find the problem so quickly.

Still, he thought, there had been something strange...

Kevin set the thought aside and focused back on his work.

It took nearly three centi-cycles before he had the code he wanted finished, adapted perfectly for one program's use. He'd gone over and over it, refining, wanting it to live up to Tron himself. To Alan's coding.

"Finished?" Tron asked when he finally walked into the domicile they now shared and saw Kevin sitting in a chair, sipping energy and rereading Robinson Crusoe.

"Yeah." Kevin waved his drink at the seat opposite and marked his place, setting the book aside.

Tron sat. "So what is it you've been working on?"

"Something for you." Kevin picked up the small silver hexagon that rested on the table beside him. He tossed it at Tron, who caught it reflexively.

"What is it?" the program asked, turning it over in his fingers.

"Shielding coding," Kevin answered. Tron looked back up at him, eyes wide. "After what happened with those viruses..." He stopped, then started again. "You don't have to accept it if you don't want it. I will never mess around with your coding without your permission. But I'd rather have you safe than bleeding to death like that again."

Tron turned the chip over again a couple times, looking at it. "If you hadn't insisted on coming with me, I would have been derezzed and no one would know the difference."

"Not no one," Kevin insisted. Other programs might not have been able to do it, but he would've looked at the system's logs and hunted down the viruses who had taken out his friend. And then tried to recompile Tron from what was left.

The fact that hunt-and-then-recompile wasn't the other way around, Kevin was pretty sure, meant that he should spend a few cycles in meditation soon. Because even though he was usually pretty easy-going, he knew he had a temper. And being a User with a temper could escalate things to pretty ugly pretty fast.

Tron nodded in acceptance of the fact that Kevin, at least, would miss him. "Just one question," he said.

"Yeah?"

"Why in the system do you think I _wouldn't_ accept this?" asked Tron, holding up the shield data.

* * *

**Author's Note**: "...and together, they fight crime!" Edited by both halves of Toothycat and my Wonderful Husband. I'm going here with the guess from the Tron wiki that a millicycle is roughly a Grid hour, and equivalent to a minute of real world time, resulting in a 60:1 time dilation ratio. So a centi-cycle would be ten experienced hours.


End file.
